Dozens of snowmobiles, ATVs and other vehicles the anglers rode onto the ice were also stranded. Some were later taken by boat to shore. It's unclear what will happen to the rest.

Saturday's rescue -- which involved U.S. and Canadian coast guards, more than a dozen fire departments and local volunteers -- followed several weeks of the best ice fishing locals said they had seen in decades.

Fisherman, emboldened by January's deep freeze, ventured farther and farther from shore searching for their daily quota of walleye.

Saturday's sunshine and sudden warm up - temperatures skyrocketed into the 50s - apparently caught some of them by surprise. As the ice began to melt, 35 mph winds blew chunks of it around.

A foot-wide crack in the ice they had ignored early in the morning suddenly grew wide.

The first call for help came at about 10:45 a.m.

A fisherman reported that a makeshift bridge of wooden boards and pallets they used to cross the narrow crack had fallen into open water, Ottawa County Sheriff Robert Bratton said.

Now fisherman -- some estimated more than 500 of them - were adrift, unable to reach shore.

Stranded anglers on ice floes is nothing new in the area. It happens most years, usually in groups of 10 or 20.

But Catawba and the Lake Erie islands hadn't seen so many fisherman in decades, Bratton said.

Recent weekends have attracted as many as 1,000 eager to haul their gear out onto Lake Erie with ATVs. There were so many shanties, it looked like small towns were springing up on the ice, Bratton said.

As the nation watched - parts of the ice rescue were broadcast live on cable news channels - anglers lined up on the edge of the ice floe about 1 ½ miles from shore waiting for help.

Others familiar with Lake Erie gathered their gear and headed for shore on their own, racing east toward Davis Besse and the Moose Lodge in Port Clinton.

A few even made a 12-mile journey to Catawba Island State Park, where hundreds of ice fishermen headed out Saturday morning.

Gary and David Vaughn were among the fishermen trapped on the ice. The brothers from Pennsylvania set up in a shanty around 7 a.m. When they stepped outside again around 11 a.m., they knew they were in trouble.

As they waited with the others to be rescued, anxiety grew.

"We feared the ice would just break up under us," Gary Vaughn, 47, said. "I feared for my life."

Meanwhile, fisherman Leslie Love, his son-in-law and a friend were trying to make their way back to shore on snowmobiles. About half way between Davis Besse and the mouth of the Toussaint River, about 200 yards off shore, Love's snowmobile broke through the ice.

According to authorities, the 65-year-old New Albany man was in about three feet of water when his son-in-law and friend helped him onto solid ice. As Love sat on one of their snowmobiles, he collapsed.

Love's friend called 9-1-1 and his son-in-law performed CPR until a Coast Guard helicopter arrived and flew Love to a hospital. But it was too late. Love, who had a history of medical problems, died at Firelands Regional Medical Center in Sandusky. Bratton said Love's death and rescue effort could have been prevented with common sense.

"I have no problem with people ice fishing but these idiots should realize that when you see open water, you should not build a bridge and cross it," Bratton said. "It's a shame you can't arrest people for stupidity."

In 2005, about 45 anglers were rescued from an ice floe almost exactly at the spot of Saturday's rescue. In 2001, three fishermen wandering in fog off Middle Bass Island fell through the ice and drowned.

Fisherman Cory Comar of Adrian, Mich, said it only took a few hours for the crack in the ice to swell from a inches to more than 100 feet.

Both Comar and his ATV made it off the floe, thanks in part to a few locals in air boats -- an-driven, flat-bottomed boats that can glide across ice or water.

Some locals volunteered and others charged the fisherman to ferry their snowmobiles and ATVs off the ice floe. One of the locals ran into trouble of his own.

"We watched a private air boat loaded with an ATV hit open water, and take a big wave over the bow," Comar said.

The air boat and the ATV sank, he said, adding that there were 35 to 40 vehicles on the ice after the anglers were rescued.

Nearby ice fishermen who were a couple of miles northwest of Catawba Island around the Bass Islands, including a crowd on the west side of South Bass Island, weren't bothered by the melting and drifting floes.

"The ice was in pretty good shape off Catawba, though there was a lot of standing water," ice guide Jerry Abele of Marblehead said.

Put-In-Bay ice guide Pat Chrysler said their area wasn't impacted by the winds.

"We always keep a close eye on the weather, and we're aware of changing conditions," he said.

If the anglers on the ice floe listened to those reports, Saturday's rescue may have never happened.

Chrysler said that both the marine radio and National Weather Service reported the possibility of ice movement on Western Lake Erie on both Friday and Saturday morning.

By nightfall, many locals concluded the wind and temperatures had nothing to do with the ice floe.

They blamed the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Mackinaw, which Comar and another fisherman said went through 9 a.m. outside the pack of ice anglers.

But the 240-foot Mackinaw, which cuts a 300-foot wide path through the ice, did not contribute to the shifting Lake Erie ice, as a few fishermen have charged, Lt. Dave French of the U.S. Coast Guard's public affairs office.

"The Mackinaw has been working Lake Erie for the last week, or so. The Mackinaw was in Cleveland (Friday night)," said French, by cell phone. "When we got the call about stranded ice fishermen, they were asked to assist. The Mackinaw is now heading north, up the Detroit River."

According to boatnerd.com, an internet site about Great Lakes shipping traffic, reported the Mackinaw was on the Detroit River on Thursday morning, stopping at the U.S. Coast Guard's Group Detroit before heading for Lake Erie. The Mackinaw was spotted by Lake Erie islanders on the north side of Kelleys Island at noon on Saturday.

The U.S. Coast Guard put four helicopters into the air to rescue fishermen. Three came from Air Station Detroit, while another arrived from Traverse City, Mich. Also flying over the area was a large C-130 aircraft from Elizabeth City, N.C.

"The C-130 was doing longer sweeps along the shoreline," said French. "We wanted to make sure there weren't other people in trouble and needing assistance."

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